Steven Pinker Offers Creepy Defense of Colin McGinn

Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker has sent a letter of protest regarding the University of Miami’s dismissal of Colin McGinn for harassing a female graduate student. “Such an action,” says Pinker, “would put a chill on communication between faculty and graduate students.” Pinker further fears that McGinn’s dismissal will stymie “the openness and informality on which scholarship depends.”

That depends on your definition of openness and informality. One of the messages, according to the Chronicle , was about how McGinn had been thinking about the student while masturbating. She described the messages, which McGinn continued to send over several months, as ”extremely inappropriate and uncomfortable.”